


Paper Fire

by buttercups3



Series: Being Miles [1]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: LJ 60 prompts in 60 days, M/M, prompt: paper lantern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 19:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles is on his way to win back Danny and confront Monroe, when a paper lantern reminds him of his old lover. Moody Miloe piece. "A red smear of fire drifted languidly across the starry ether."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Fire

A red smear of fire drifted languidly across the starry ether.

“Paper lantern,” Miles mumbled at Charlie, sensing her puzzlement. An ancient Chinese communication medium used on the battlefield. A means by which to spy. And then eventually a stupid party token used by bored middle-class civvies at their nighttime soirees. Miles was in a funk tonight, and he didn’t want to take it out on Charlie. But if she didn’t catch the scent of his crabbiness soon and evacuate, she’d be sure to get caught in its sticky web.

“What’s it mean?” she asked, her eyes wide and curious.

Miles fought the urge to jam his fingers in his short, spiky hair and tell her to beat it.

“Someone mourning a death, celebrating a birth. Who knows? Who cares?”

“Pretty.”

Miles shook his head. A thing like that had a function beyond pretty. He at least appreciated that about the apocalypse, that he could stop pretending to care about the things folks pretended to care about: like art or if you had on black socks with your black pants. These things mystified Miles even before he’d been to war. So he drank. He drank because it softened the blow when people looked at you funny when they asked you questions like: What’s your name? and you only mumbled back. Or when they asked you if you were ok when your mother died of fucking stomach cancer – a bleak disease where you barfed up green goo until you expired in a wobbly puddle of your insides. Or when they stopped asking you if you were ok, and then you were supposed to say: I’m fine. As if you’d ever be fine again. After having seen the green goo swallow your own god-dammed mother.

But Miles wasn’t really about to dwell on all that tonight. He wasn’t even upset that Charlie dragged him out here to retrieve his nephew, when all he knew of Danny was the image of a blubbering, sickly little infant with translucent arms that looked more like crab legs than human limbs. Nope. Miles was bent out of shape about Monroe. Because he was going to have to confront him in Philly. And on a night like this – the way the breeze drifted off the lake, cooling just the very outer layer of epidermis, leaving the burning blood beneath – all Miles could think about was Bass. Not the friend, not the comrade-in-arms, not even the president to his general, but the lover. That was the part Charlie didn’t know, Nora didn’t know…nobody except Rachel and presumably Ben. (Spouses are leaky buckets of information.) And they were both dead.

Actually, the whole damn memory rising up in Miles’s throat to choke off his air passage was Rachel’s fault, because she insisted on having white paper lanterns at her wedding reception. Miles and Bass had been drinking all night. Normally they were careful about not showing overt signs of affection in public. Everything about their – whatever it was – took place in stolen glances, in closets, in filthy, bed-bug infested hotel rooms, where they’d screw in the bath instead of the bed, because what if one of those things crawled up your ass? Or that’s what Bass always said. Ludicrous, but… _what if_?

Exhausted from dancing and cheap beer, Miles and Bass had walked down to the dock of the lake and peered out at the shimmering black – stars above and stars below on the water – those stupid, paper lanterns. And just because no one was around and the booze had loosened their joints like the Tin Man back from Oz, Bass slipped his fingertips into Miles’s, entangling them there, making every nerve ending in Miles happy. Because that was a thing you still felt back then (happiness), even after a tour in Iraq. Not because joy made sense – it didn’t – but because Bass would smile that toothy, lopsided grin at you and take your breath away. Fuck. Fingers in fingers like a tapestry – everything fit just right. 

They plopped on their backs on the grass, already sweating its dew, soaking their rented suits. They’d pay for that later. And Bass had reached over to run his callousy fingers through the side of Miles’s shorn head, scratching with the nails, engaging more pleasure receptors until Miles’s head was tingling and singing. He closed his eyes. Bass trailed the fingers down the front of Miles’s dress shirt unbuttoning just the lower buttons so Bass could graze his nails along the ripples of Miles’s stomach.

Miles lolled his head to look at Bass. “Don’t. Someone’ll see.”

Bass rested his palm on the fur-line heading downwards. “Don’t care. Needed to feel your skin.”

“Romantic fool. The starlight getting to you?”

The teeth flashed white as the lanterns. “No. Your face is. Your big fucking handsome face set off by that too-tight suit. You’re a beautiful bastard.”

Miles laughed silently, shoulders shaking upward from the grass. He was about to say something snarky, but it didn’t feel right. They had just come back from watching some of the people closest to them on earth die. It changed the way you spent your words. “So’re you,” he mumbled instead.

“So…it’s just as I thought. Ben wouldn’t believe me. But it’s true,” came a voice from behind them.

What they were doing was actually pretty innocent, but it probably didn’t look that way – Bass’s hand dangerously close to being down Miles’s pants, the white shirt flapped away, revealing bare skin. The Marines rolled apart in an instant, and Miles began stuffing his shirt back into place, his heart beating and his cheeks burning in shame.

“Don’t worry!” Rachel insisted. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” Her fluffy, white dress all bunched at the back for dancing made her appear absurdly old-fashioned and teetering off balance.

Miles remembered being as angry in that moment as he’d ever been. Fire welling up from the deepest, most rejected reaches of himself. Because Rachel got to marry Ben and hold his hand whenever she wanted and lean her head under Ben’s chin on the L when she got sleepy or swoony or whatever. And Miles and Bass could never touch – couldn’t even whisper. Everything of theirs was silence and looks and curled lips. Fuck her and her perfect life. Miles’s life only made sense when ammo was exploding around him, and his eyes were locked on Bass’s helmet, because keeping Bass in your sight meant keeping him alive in combat.

Charlie again, interrupting this reverie, but maybe for the best this time. “Why are you so worried about confronting Monroe, Miles?”

Because the dream of having Bass was almost…all Miles had ever had. Because even when they were general and president, they couldn’t let the troops know they were together. Hell, they weren’t really ever together, only wanted to be. Maybe they could have finally been together after the Blackout, but instead Miles had insisted on making them the two most prominent fuckers in the land. No, Miles had forced Bass to always be that piece of shit paper lantern drifting like a memory over the vast expanse of chilly water. If Miles had to see Bass again in real life, it only meant that Miles would have to replace the perfect image of that laughing twenty-something-year old Bass with his fingers entangled in Miles’s stomach hair, caught by the bratty sister-in-law, who didn’t really understand but probably just thought it was hip to have gay Marines in the family.

Seeing Bass again meant acknowledging that everything had gone to hell before it even really got started. That even the two closest humans could grow apart – one toward the sun and one toward the shadow (hideous, coiled, poisonous).

Miles shrugged at Charlie and said, “Lantern’s burned out,” pointing, as if that answered her question, as if that even scratched the surface. He sensed her resplendently youthful face following him as he walked away from her toward the dark. He hoped to God she’d never know the kind of love he’d suffered.


End file.
